Playlist: Songs you didn’t know black people wrote

Early in their nightclub and recording careers, the Beatles performed many songs by black songwriters. Not only hall-of-famers like Chuck Berry and Smokey Robinson, but forgotten artists such as Larry Williams, Roy Lee Johnson and Arthur Alexander.

Alexander wrote and recorded “Anna (Go to Him)” in 1962. The next year, John Lennon sang it for the very first Beatles album. (Click here to hear Arthur Alexander’s version.)

A No. 1 hit for Elvis in 1958, “Hard Headed Woman” was written for him by Claude Demetrius, a successful black songwriter who had worked with Louis Jordan. (Click here to hear “I Like ’Em Fat Like That,” a tune Demetrius wrote with Jordan.)

According to Wikipedia, “Hard Headed Woman” was the first rock ’n’ roll 45 to be officially designated a “gold record.”

This was the Stones’ very first No. 1 single in Britain. “It’s All Over Now” has since been covered by the likes of Rod Stewart, the Grateful Dead and the Chambers Brothers. In New Orleans, the Dirty Dozen and Rebirth brass bands have turned it into a familiar parade number.

The song was written by Bobby Womack and his sister-in-law, Shirley Jean, for Womack’s family group, the Valentinos. (Click here to hear the Valentinos original.)

Remember those Golden Grahams commercials from the ’70s? Oh, those Golden Grahams. Oh, those Golden Grahams... Yep, a black guy wrote that melody... 130 years ago.

I grew up knowing “Oh Dem Golden Slippers” as a piece of Americana, like “Sweet Adeline.” Never knew that it used to be sung in blackface. And that it was written by Negro minstrel James A. Bland, who also wrote “Carry Me Back to Old Virginny.”

Born before the Civil War to a free and educated black family in Flushing, N.Y., Bland graduated from Howard University in 1873 and spent 20 years performing in London.

Today, there are housing projects named after Mr. Bland in Flushing, Queens, and Alexandria, Virginia.

(Click here to hear Nina Simone sing another of Bland’s enduring tunes, “In the Evening by the Moonlight.”)

15 comments:

Geneva Girl
said...

Oh Dem Golden Slippers is a Philadelphia Mummers standard. And, yes, I'm pretty sure that it was sung in blackface since that's how the different Mummer string bands used to perform. (I imagine that only people from Philly to know what a Mummer is.)

Another I forgot to mention is “Charleston”... one of the defining melodies of the Roaring ‘20s. We all grew up hearing this song some kind of way... like, in old movies or cartoons. You probably remember that high-kicking dance too. The Charleston was an international sensation.

“Charleston” was composed by James P. Johnson, a founding father of jazz piano. Click here to hear a piano roll version cut by Johnson himself. (Supposedly, he never recorded it as a phonograph record.)

FYI - This is what a Mummers string band looks like:http://www.life.com/image/78689917

Oh Dem Golden Slippers is a perennial favorite at the New Year's Day Mummers Parade. I only know the song from hearing it all over town which is ironic since black folks were banned from performing in the parade and blackface wasn't outlawed until 1964.

Fortune Teller, a tune by recorded by The Who & The Stones, was also written by Allen Toussaint under a pseudonym: Naomi Neville. And also, Alexander's original version of Anna figures in my favorite episode of Married With Children, where Al can't remember the name of this song ("Hmmm hmmm him").